This week, one of the greatest names in streaming is in the limelight. Big events in gaming often occur in places you wouldn’t anticipate. Shroud, a well-known streamer and former esports star, has publicly backed ARC Raiders for Game of the Year 2025 and asked his followers not to let Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 take the award.
Here’s a deeper look at what he said, why it matters, and how this moment reflects the broader competition in the year’s GOTY race.
Shroud’s stance: What did he say?
Shroud told fans to vote for ARC Raiders during a recent livestream. He remarked, “Dude, we’ve got to make sure that this game wins Game of the Year, by the way. Do not let that Expedition game win Game of the Year. Do not let it! Absolutely, do not! We all have to band together to make this game win.”
He said that he has never voted for an award before, but this year he would because he feels ARC Raiders deserves it.
A streamer’s influence on the GOTY conversation
Shroud is one of the most significant individuals in gaming content development, and his support for ARC Raiders probably gets more attention than most multiplayer games do. His call to arms changes the discourse around GOTY beyond just narrative single-player games to include well-known multiplayer games as well.
A clash of genres and expectations
Embark Studios and Nexon’s ARC Raiders is a multiplayer extraction/shooter game that focuses on tactical collaboration and emergent extraction-action. Conversely, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a single-player game with an engaging storyline, an immersive world, and genre-defining turn-based combat.
What Shroud is doing is effectively saying: “Don’t overlook the multiplayer experience — it can carry GOTY too.” It challenges the common assumption that only solo, narrative-heavy games win these accolades.
A signal of what kinds of games the community values
Shroud tells his fans to support ARC Raiders, which shows that multiplayer gameplay, live service potential, and the player community are equally as important as story-driven campaigns. It could lead to more varied winners of the Game of the Year award in the future.
Shroud’s public push isn’t just for one game, as it’s also about how the awards are changing and how we value different kinds of gaming experiences. If ARC Raiders wins, it would be a big deal since it would show that multiplayer extraction games are being talked about as Game of the Year candidates.
For the awards ecosystem, it raises questions about genre bias and the criteria used to crown a Game of the Year. Maybe the definition is evolving.
